The Silence We Keep: A Nun's View of the Catholic Priest Scandal (13 page)

In writing about the role of the vestal virgins, Elizabeth Abbott explains how virginity worked to their advantage, both in and out of the temple. Not only did these contemplative women serve the Goddess Vesta exclusively, body and soul, but they also served as the heart and soul of Roman society, looked upon as blessed among women, touched in an extraordinary way by the sacred fire of the Goddess.

By far the best known of antiquity’s virgins were the vestals, in whose perpetual chastity the highest authorities of state and all civil society entrusted the security of Rome. In return for this overwhelming responsibility (of keeping the sacred fires burning), the vestals lived deeply satisfying lives as revered and powerful women of such exalted status that, alone of Roman women, they enjoyed the same legal rights as men.
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For women, power doesn’t get more divine than that, and enjoying equal rights and opportunities is all it takes. So mysteriously
liberating was the experience of virginity for the vestals that even in a patriarchal world—often brutally so—they enjoyed full equality with men, the only women in Rome to do so. No wonder so many of the vestal virgins lived in the temple for life. After thirty years of being treated like a Goddess, what woman in her rightly liberated mind would want to give that up? After all that time, I bet they, too, couldn’t imagine living any other way. That’s how profoundly life transforming and soul fulfilling God-given celibacy can be. Those who bear the inner light of the sacred fire also discover heaven on earth. In return for keeping the sacred fire burning, the vestal virgins enjoyed the fullness of life.

As above, so below. The esteemed vestal virgins demonstrate what life can be like for women who spend their lives kindling the sacred fires burning within their souls. Their physical virginity matches their spiritual strength. What matters most in the life of these vestal sisters is the virgin soul. What always matters most is the spark of divine life inside all of us that we must never allow anyone to extinguish, most of all ourselves. Of the Goddess Vesta one ancient wrote, “Thou art the pristine spirit, the nature of which is bliss”—heaven on earth, the divine fullness of life here and now, as well as in the eternal life to come. That’s what we have to lose when we lose our virgin soul. Bliss.

If we look far beyond what meets our eye, we can feel inside when our light is being extinguished. We feel suffocated, silenced, ignored, bored and boring, sick and tired, even buried alive. When that happens, lives become sadly like all those whose sacred fire has been extinguished along with any hope of happiness. Hopelessness is a sure sign that the eternal flame inside is nearly extinguished. The vestal virgins serve to remind us how essential it is to tend the sacred fires and heart’s desires of our own virgin soul,
married or not. Above and below, it truly is a matter of life and death.

The virgin soul means the same thing today as it did in the beginning. Those touched by the Goddess Vesta belong to no one but her, and their lives belong to no one but them. Those who possess a virgin soul can be no man’s wife, nor do they want a husband. They are complete in themselves, with no need for a counterpart. Unmarried is the sacred state of the virgin soul, the lifestyle of those who belong to no one but the Goddess. She who will not have or be had by anyone. In the eyes of the vestal virgins (and all of Rome) there was none more holy, wise, and free than she, inside and out. The mysterious power of the unmarried is one divine dimension of celibacy that we’ve long lost sight of. That’s one sacred fire that appears all but totally extinguished.

Being unmarried, solitary, and contemplative is only half of the lifestyle of the virgin soul. The real divine power of virginity becomes manifest through the extraordinary way in which these women live. Esteemed by all as representatives and messengers of the Goddess, these vestal virgins sound very much like “The Ideal Wife” described in the Book of Proverbs: “Men entrust their hearts to her because she brings them good and not evil all the days of her life…. She enjoys the success of her dealings; and at night her lamp is undimmed…. She opens her mouth in wisdom and on her tongue is kindly counsel…. She is clothed with strength and dignity, and she laughs at the days to come” (31:10–31). Those who bear divinity in their own right are led naturally toward lifestyles of extraordinary dedication and service. That much is clear within the sisterhood of the vestal virgins.

Those who bear divinity in their own right tend not to be submissive to any voice of authority other than that of the Goddess. For example, because virgins tend only to the voice of gods, they need not seek approval from others. Anyone who lives their life
in order to please others, be accepted, gain power, or win another’s interest or love, is no virgin. We become ever virgin only through living our lives according to the voice of God, the presence of the Goddess in our soul’s sacred fires. It’s in following single-heartedly our holy intuitions and our sacred heart’s desires that we become ever virgin, full of creative and compassionate powers this world cannot survive without. That was true in the beginning with the sisterhood of the vestal virgins. The safety and security of Roman society was entrusted to them completely. They were the makers and keepers of peace on earth.

While the vestal virgins flourished for hundreds of years after the birth of Christ, they, too, were eventually condemned as evil by Christianity in the fourth century along with other pagan cults, and all because of sex. For thousands of years sexual union was revered as the greatest and most sacred rite between the deities and us. Sexual customs, such as fertility rites, became integrated naturally into religious rituals. They were the most sacred expression of human contact with God. Ancient religions believed that whenever a deep abiding love exists, the Goddess becomes fully present in many ways, sexual union being one of them. In the religion of the Goddess, there is nothing in us that is not divine. But not so with the religion of Christianity whose Crusade it became to condemn the sanctity of sex as evil, and whose mission it became to extinguish the sacred fire of the Goddess, above and below, once and for all.

In condemning sexual pleasure as evil, Christianity condemns all virgin priestesses as prostitutes and sorcerers, hunting them down, destroying their temples, and publicly torturing them to death, doing all in their priestly power to destroy the sanctity of sexual union as the heart and soul of religion. Along with the
virgin priestesses went the goddesses to whom they vowed their lives. The sacred fires of sex are condemned as evil by the Church Fathers, and their primary job is to see that those eternal flames remain extinguished, especially in women, whom they blame for starting them. While Christianity wholeheartedly endorses and honors as holy the virgin’s sacred liberty to refuse sex forever, it does all in its power to condemn as evil the virgin’s freedom to accept sacred sex as well. Quite clearly, that’s not the kind of virginity the Church Fathers had in mind. To the literal-minded, virginity can’t be both. It’s impossible. To a mind obsessed with sex, uncontrolled virginity becomes just as dangerous as uncontrolled sexuality.

The virgin soul can literally mean only one thing in Christianity: no sex. The only way women can be seen as holy, as equal, as anything other than a sex object, is if they vow never to have sex, never to be a sexual object, and never act like the evil, lustful seducers of men that we are. The desexualized, neutered woman (like the castrated man) becomes the New Virgin in Christianity. She who denies sex forever and becomes a “Bride of Christ.” She who extinguishes the sacred fire within her soul once and for all. She who vows and allows her heart’s desire to remain hidden, silent, and buried alive. That’s the New Virgin the Church Fathers literally carved out; or so they thought. Yet sex is one sacred fire they can’t extinguish in themselves, much less in anyone else, especially women.

Just as the vestal virgins emerged as antiquity’s first nuns, so, too, do the women of Galilee who followed Jesus emerge as Christianity’s first nuns. And it’s not unlikely that these two groups of women would’ve known each other and shared sisterhood. Vestal virgins naturally would have been drawn to the Jesus Movement, given its wide reputation for liberating women and the oppressed, for rekindling the sacred fires of those whose
soulful flames are dying. And both groups of women experienced profoundly how their hearts burned when their God spoke, and how their lives changed miraculously when they followed the divine voice.

In the beginning, Christianity was viewed widely as a religion of the oppressed, and in every age that category automatically includes an overwhelming majority of women. Given centuries of female-dominated house churches, it’s entirely likely that vestal virgins served as hosts or guest presiders of Christian “table communities.” In the Jesus Movement, the vestals would have felt at home and been treated as the goddesses they were. Some merging of virgin sisterhoods appears to happen in Christianity (at least in spirit), because the women who follow Jesus seem to possess the same virgin soul as their vestal sisters and seem to hear the same sacred call to sisterhood.

In the same divine spirit of the Goddess Vesta, Jesus calls disciples to break family ties and follow. Family expectations, even society’s norms, mean nothing in the Jesus Movement. All that matters is hearing the Word of God and keeping it, listening to the deities in our hearts and souls and keeping the sacred fires burning. The Jesus Movement was so attractive to women and the oppressed because its message set them free. Like the Goddess Vesta, so, too, does Jesus call us to break out of the life that suffocates us and set ourselves free. And so deeply do women hear that divine call that they, too, drop everything and follow. They, too, become virgin in following Christ, and they, too, cannot go back to living any other way.

Just as celibacy freed vestal virgins from the endless burden of abusive men and endless childbearing, so, too, does virginity become the magic key to a priestly life for women in the early church. In refusing to marry (or remarry), women step outside of every sexist expectation in the service of God, thereby gaining
the freedom necessary to minister, preach, and live apostolic lives, ordained or not. Sent out in two’s, women and men traveled together in celibate partnership, manifesting not only a new vision of God as love, but also a divine vision of a new social order in which men and women live and work in full and equal partnership. In Christianity, virginity continues to endow women with the divine power of independence normally restricted for men alone. For biblical women, celibacy was experienced as “a good thing.”

At the core of the early Christian church, it appeared as though a celibate sisterhood emerged freely and gladly long before a celibate priesthood did by force. Widows, liberated prostitutes, separated wives, virgins, and freed slaves were among those most likely moved by Christ to form a sisterhood of prayer and apostolic service. Virginity continues to wipe out gender differences in those who follow Christ, giving women the divine authority and independence to pursue apostolic lives. Just as perpetual virginity did for vestal virgins in the beginning, so, too, did celibacy remain the divine equalizer for women in the early church. For all intents and purposes, virginity becomes the “free pass” for women into the “boys club,” in the name and service of God.

Even as women began to be squeezed out of priestly activities by the Church Fathers, the sisterhood of Church Mothers worked to develop alternative ministries rooted in the Spirit of Christ. It’s the sisterhood that developed and built ministries of prayer, prophecy, healing, and counsel and the sisterhood that developed and built communities centered on lives of charity, works of mercy, and fellowship around the table. Just as it did in the beginning, virginity serves as a divine source of power for women in the early church. And the sisterhood of women, called
to leave everything and follow Christ, became an equally powerful influence in Christianity, especially among widows.